Last week a huge bunch of people gathered in London to celebrate all things Fantasy, Science Fiction and related stuff at Loncon, this year’s incarnation of Worldcon. And what do you know, I was one of them. Since I had no idea what to really expect from a con like this, I took some notes, and decided to write it all out as a small series of blogs.

I arrived in London of Wednesday and managed to just miss the Grim Gathering Fantasy Faction had going on. Too bad, but nothing could get me down since I would be seeing most of those authors some time during the next week anyway. On Thursday I took the DLR from our apartment to the convention center. They had two train stops serving the place, to give you some indication of the size.

You know what was even bigger (ok, not literally) the queue we all had to stand in to get registered. So for about half an hour I shuffled forward. Then, when I thought I’d arrived, I got put in the next queue downstairs. Those British folks know what they’re good at. The fun thing though is that you are for standing in line with 2014 Hugo nominee (at the time) Mary Robinette Kowal.

Once I finally got in I managed to catch most of the opening ceremonies, which was fun, but not nearly as big a deal as I had expected. The room was filled to maybe 10% of capacity. But it was fun as they sorted the guests of honour into houses Hogwarts style with a propellor cap as sorting hat. There was singing too, but let’s not talk about that.

Next I decided to jump into the panel action, which makes up a huge part of the program. My first panel was a good one, about urban fantasy with (among others) guest of honour Robin Hobb. You could tell everybody was still getting into it, but it was fun. Like I said, I didn’t know quite what to expect, and this was a good way roll into it.

Next was an interview with Connie Willis and some chap named George R.R. Martin. So that meant: bring on the queueing (that word looks so wonderful) again. I never thought I’d make it in, but some more shuffling later and there I was, in the same room as George R.R. Martin. Fanboy alert! The session was a lot of fun, Connie and George go way back and were taking stabs at each other all the time. But it goes to show sometimes at a convention you can just be a reader and have a good time.

Final session of the day was one about politics and ideology with folks like Kim Stanley Robinson, who says pretty smart things. I really need to read the rest of the Mars books.

I wanted to have beer with Scott Lynch, only to find out then that you needed to sign up. So that wasn’t going to work out, but I would have my revenge on the sign-up sheets eventually.

All in all a good first day, where I also ran into some dude with a giant beard who goes by the name of Patrick Rothfuss. I have a feeling my fanboy alert is going to keep going off during these posts.

Besides writing, I spent a good part of 2013 developing. Largely in a professional context, but outside of work as well. It all culminated in releasing my first app to the iOS App Store, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Work

The biggest thing about my year was moving to a new job. So far it’s great, and I love it there. I wrote about it in another post. I’ve been there for five months now, and have spent a lot more time developing than I have for a while. At my previous job I wrote a lot of code at the beginning, but then also branched into project management and operations roles. I think having that as extra baggage helps me as a developer. But it’s great to be back in the trenches.

I write a lot of JavaScript nowadays, mostly using Ember. It’s my first time working extensively with a JavaScript framework, and I’m enjoying it. The rest of my time I’m working with Ruby and Rails, not entirely new for me, but a lot of fun.

Appuccino

My biggest personal achievement was developing and releasing Appuccino. A small app that helps you find espressobars nearby. I started working on it last year, but finished most of it this year. I was about ready to release it when iOS7 came out, which made me do a redesign and release it soon after. It has not been a hit, but I’m very proud of building the whole thing and releasing it. I am slowly but steadily building up a user base, and that will be the focus of 2014.

Writing Objective-C has been an interesting exercise. I have spent most of my time writing Python, Ruby, and JavaScript, and Objective-C is a different beast. Sure there are similarities, but it is much more verbose. There is also programming with the Apple API’s, which is interesting, and different than anything I have done before. I wrote animations and drawing code (which I later took out again), which is probably more complicated than anything I have done before. It was fun, and I will definitely do more of it.

Learning

I think the most important part of being a developer is learning new skills. This year I can count Ember, Node.js, Objective-C, and Meteor as some of the things I have spent significant time studying. I have not built a complete app with all of these yet, but I like keeping my mind fresh. I want to keep this up, but maybe with a bit more focus. Something I want to try next year is write some tutorials. I expect that to help me learn as well.

2014

Next year I will obviously keep up programming, if only because it is my job. I want to spend time expanding Appuccino, and maybe think up some small new projects. I also have some ideas for full-blown iOS apps. The one I am currently most excited about is an iPad app for writers. But we will have to see how it goes. But yeah, there is going to be new stuff for sure.